Category Archive

Yes, I’m aware that I promised to post my review of Dawn Treader, which I haven’t done. The short story is this: Better than Caspian, better than I expected, the green mist was goofy and the Eustace actor was surprisingly great.

But after seeing the movie, I started looking at the reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes (a resource I’m glad for) and started noticing the difficulties that many of the reviewers had with the religious aspects of the movie.

Now, most newspaper movie critics aren’t evangelicals, and they don’t take kindly to heavy handed religious messages in movies. This is to be expected. What I found to be interesting is how differently they expressed what they didn’t like about these parts of the movie.

So I started compiling them and I am posting many of them here.

For the most part, unless they were very interesting comments, I have kept this to (1) Major American new sources (i.e. Not Timmy Tompsons Online Movie Reviews) with (2) negative reviews.

OK, once again I should clarify that the source books were not a part of my childhood, and I find the whole crypto-Christian aspect tiresome, simplistic and of dubious theological value. . . .

What’s it all in the service of—apart from setting up the next entry? Well, I’m not entirely clear on that. When Aslan (Christ as a CGI lion) shows up at the climax, he tells Lucy that the whole reason for all this is so that she will understand that in her world he is “known by another name.” If that’s what this was all about, there must have been an easier—certainly less lengthy—way to convey it

Theologians and C.S. Lewis devotees can discuss the many Christian parallels in The Chronicles of Narnia until the nymphs come home, but the series has always been — for me, anyway – a luminous view of childhood as its own secret country.

The swords are little more than narrative props and too easily found, and Jesus … er … I mean, Aslan helps Eustace break free of a magical curse that should’ve offered dramatic rewards. . . . the film offers an interminable coda that pounds away at Lewis’ heavy-handed religious metaphors. In the end, it’s hard to tell whether Disney is paying homage to the author here or cynically securing an audience that’s so desperate to have its faith validated that they’ll accept a second-rate adaptation of his work.
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Of course, when we get to the finale and a visit to Aslan’s Island, we’re bogged down by the Bible once again.

And then, at the very end, the lion we’ve all been waiting for makes his full-fledged return; however, the arrival of Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) this time marks the clunkiest semi-sermon about Christian values, converting stuffy, science-minded skeptics, and reaching heaven. As I understand it, Lewis himself included as much in the books, but so far as the films go, this one is the least subtle in its underlying message.
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Eustace doesn’t believe in faith and fairy tales. He spends his time reading, as he sneers, “books with facts.” He isn’t actually wearing a sign on his back saying, “Kick me, I’m an atheist,” but he might as well be.

Aslan, the awe-inspiring yet adorable talking lion who, in the religious-allegory scheme of things in the Lewis oeuvre, is a stand-in for, well, Jesus Christ himself. I haven’t read the “Narnia” books, so I don’t know exactly what Aslan’s trip was in them, but in the films, Aslan’s not so much about helping poor people and being mindful of casting the first stone as he is about Manichean moral assessments and achieving adolescent self-esteem within the yellow lines (as it were) of said assessments.

The holy lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) mixes the gentle wisdom of Jesus with the Old Testament God’s gravitas; but so do Gandalf and Dumbledore from secular literature. And when you hear the line, “We have nothing if not belief,” you are forgiven if you think of Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell, who required the faith of the little ones to restore her to life.

Once upon a time, the Narnia books constituted a beloved children’s fantasy with strong spiritual overtones for those who sought them; Lewis insisted he began writing the series with no Christian symbology in mind, and “that element pushed itself in of its own accord.” Now, unhappily enough, this half-successful film series — ditched by Disney, and since picked up by Fox — has become both a casualty and an instrument in America’s culture wars, and Narnia is widely understood as mainly or exclusively a Christian realm (although it remains too heterodox for some believers).

As my friend and colleague Laura Miller (author of the “The Magician’s Book,” an affectionate, skeptical rereading of Lewis) observes, the Adamson-Apted Narnia movies have been significantly Christianized, in the sense that 21st-century American Christianity is a much different animal from the high-Anglican, early-20th-century version Lewis was preaching. This retelling of “Dawn Treader” is relentlessly goal-oriented — our heroes must collect seven swords, and free a bunch of people imprisoned in mysterious green mist — in a way Lewis’ book simply isn’t. It’s also prodigiously sentimental about the sanctity of the nuclear family, an article of American faith that would have seemed totally mysterious to Lewis and his age, when middle-class or upper-class English children grew up barely acquainted with their own parents. While appearing to argue the unchanging verities of faith, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” illustrates how much our ideas about God are shaped by culture.

Director Michael Apted has injected a greater sense of adventure in this installment, though the references to having faith do little to prevent much of the dialogue from sounding very much like a Sunday sermon without the actual references to specifically Christian names.

. . .

The denouement brings the sermon home, with Aslan slyly revealing to Lucy that he is known by another name in her world, and that she must seek him out there. A ponderous moment, and one that subtracts from the genuinely bittersweet decision Reepicheep makes for himself.

But even so, Dawn Treader is a dreary, meandering, and largely pointless exercise in shuffling from one event to the next, with the religious symbolism that was Lewis’s primary motivation in writing the novels – and Walden Media’s chief reason for producing the movies – largely buffed out, and robbing most of the film’s theme in the process (it’s a weird feeling for me to watch a movie and complain, “There’s not enough Jesus in this”; but at least that’s something). The book’s potent baptism imagery, one of the finest explicitly Christian elements in any of the seven novels, is entirely gone; only at the very end, when the Christ-analogue lion Aslan (voiced, as ever, by Liam Neeson, an uncommonly good choice to play a Christlike animal) explains some rules to the children, does the film lurch towards apologetics, which makes it even worse.

Awkward Narnia moment number 300 takes place when Lucy is having her last goodbyes with Aslan, who then comforts her by telling her that he is in her world under another name and she must learn it to know him there. So he’s incognito? A giant talking lion? Actually, in the Lewis book, there are very strong hints as to what that name is, but try getting a pro-Christian reference into a children’s movie these days and see what you get.

Having been a part of a bible study a time or two, I have gathered some thoughts about what can make the study time more helpful. Several of these have been learned by watching men like Dan and Bob, who have done exemplary work as study leaders.

10 Things To Do When Leading A Bible Study:

1. Come up with a list question for the bible study members (“Let’s see if we can come up with five ways that this passage suggests Jesus was . . . “)

2. Have a big take away (or more than one)

3. Check out a commentary or two.

4. Note what the passage says about God.

5. Point out anything that is surprising in the text.

6. But also don’t be afraid of saying obvious things about it.

7. Work through the difficult parts.

8. Show the context.

9. If the members are fairly mature Christians, check out the Skeptics Annotated Bible and bring their bible-doubting comments about the passage at hand to the table.

Since 2002, we have been sending out our Christmas letter (with a picture) in a ‘By The Numbers’ fashion – for these reasons:

1. It’s unique.
2. It does a good job of telling about our year, and state of being.
3. It shows my interest in numbers and lists.
4. My feeling is – the shorter a Christmas list, the more likely it is that people will read it – but I admit that this year we moved from a third sheet to a half sheet.

Here is this years, only slightly edited –

JamFam BY THE NUMBERS – 2008

Historic State Park Geocaches found on the Eastern border of Minnesota: 12

Fish caught by Jamsco on his first men’s boundary waters trip since before kids: 1

Picnics: 81 . . . beat last years record by 2

Years Jamsco had Bob as a father: 28 (He is very grateful)

Fighter Verse Song CDs given out at Bethlehem (our church): 950 (songs written by Jamsco)

Holes in garage roof when big branch fell during storm: 3

Trees taken down in our yard to prevent further damage: 3 1/2

Inches wide at the base of the largest tree: 46* The tree’s age: 100+

Kids (from two families) stung by yellow jackets when a hive was discovered by Erik: 7

Times Erik was stung: 8*Kids in the five families in our small group: 21

Years it took Bethel to have a Children’s Choir at the Festival of Christmas: 52

JamFam kids in the Festival Children’s Choir: 3*Performances: 5

Birth weight of our newly adopted child named Foster: 6 lbs, 5 oz

Minutes after Foster was born that Debbie was holding him: 70

Age of our kids on November 21st: 10,9,8,7,6,5 (years), and 4 (days)

“ Listen to me, O house of Jacob . . . who have been borne by me,

from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am He

and to gray hairs I will carry you.I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” Isaiah 46:3-4

Picnics: 9Geocaches found: 12State Park Historical Geocaches found: 7
Total Geocaches found (last two years):101
Steep Hill hikes: 6
Miles hiked: 5? 8?
Complaints from kids: shockingly few, now that I think about it.
Complaints after I promised ice cream: 0Twisted or Sprained Ankles: 0 (A gift from God)
Minutes of Television Watched: 0Number of mice spotted in cabin and caught in trap: 1 (My First Mouse Kill!)
Dollars Spent where we experienced the most joy (Caribou Falls): 0Max people counted on the more popular side of Artist Point in Grand Marais: 75
Person Count on the less popular (but cooler) side of Artist Point: 10 (including us)
Temperature of the water we waded in at this point: 40? 50? (It felt great in the warm sun)
Number of Attempts required to take a timer shot of our whole family across the creek from where the camera was (I had to run fast): 4Our Gratefulness to God for creating it all for us: A lot, but not enough.

Number of blog posts in-a-row on the subject of our vacation: 4 (which is enough, I think)

13. The Trampoline with anything but your bodies. (i.e. no chairs, rakes or toys)

Am I missing anything?

* Previously mentioned.

** This one takes some explaining, I think. At first I didn’t want the kids playing in our large tent, for fear they would wreck it. I realized that they could wrestle or jump all they want and not damage anything if they refrain from banging into the sides of the tent. So that’s the rule.

One of the best gift giving situation I ever witnessed was with my son Daniel (who was 7 at the time – two years ago) He wanted to get a gift for his Mom for mother’s day and his choice was a hand held mirror.

Now it should be noted that at that time, when my wife wanted to see the back of her head as she was getting ready to go out, she was using the left over product of a mirror that she had had for years. It had broken several time to the point that she was just holding a three inch cracked piece of mirror glass.

So when Daniel suggested it, I thought it was a great idea. So we went to Target and he chose the Green one (because Mrs. Jamsco likes green) and paid for it with his own money (actually personally handing the money to the check out person, – perhaps for the first time).

And Debbie was very happy when she opened it and now she uses it every day.

So thinking about that, here are –

7 Gift Giving Suggestions:

A good gift should be:
– something that shows that the giver knew a little about the receiver.
– paid for by the giver.
– something that the receiver wanted.
– not an item that makes the gift receiver uncomfortable with its expensiveness.
– something that the receiver would not get for themselves*
– useful.
– a little unexpected .

It is very rare that a gift is all of these things – but Daniel succeeded.

Any other gift giving suggestions?

* My wife sometimes doesn’t like gift suggestions that make it sound like the person is just avoiding a run to Target. (“Yeah, while you’re there, could you pick up some striped socks for me?”)

1. I forgot.
2. I’m in a hurry
3. I’m really busy
4. He’s been a brat.
5. It would be fake affection
6. She already knows I love her
7. I showed him affection yesterday
8. I’m not feeling affectionate right now.
9. She doesn’t deserve affection right now.
10. He hasn’t been very affectionate towards me lately.
11. She’s independent enough that she doesn’t need it.
12. My last attempt at showing love was not appreciated.

I suppose you could put most or all of these under the title “Bad Reasons for not showing love to anyone.”

* And by “love/affection” I mean words of affirmation and encouragement, hugs, pats on the back and gifts. Also acts of Grace and Mercy. And Training and Discipline.

1. Remember that God owes none of us health
2. Speak aloud Psalm 34 changing the words to work for the patient
3. Psalm 27 works well, too.
4. Perhaps you could think of others.
5. Sing Songs of praise.
6. Pray for healing and patience
7. Pray for wisdom for the doctors.
8. Tell them you are doing this.
9. Remember that it is God who heals.
10. Thank God out loud because of the promise of eternal life for the saved – so death is not the end.
11. Witness to a man listening to his iPod in the fourth floor lounge.
12. Use this time as a reminder that all Flesh is Grass and will fade away.
13. . . . and remember the more permanent gifts.
14. Don’t waste the illness.
15. When things are very, very hard, trust God.
16. Cry.
17. Encourage the care-givers.
18. Work through how the verse that promises only good for those who are in Christ can be true in your situation.
19. Remember that Death will not have the victory.
20. Pray for patients in other rooms.
21. Wish that Jesus would return soon or call the saved sufferer home.
22. Let the less important things be made known to you as less important.
23. Remember that in Jesus we have a God who has already experienced death and has defeated it.

1. Pray for your kids every day.
2. Speak well of your child every time they do something right.
3. Bring your kids to church.
4. Thank God in front of your kids.
5. Teach Sunday School for your kids class.
6. Sing loudly at church.
7. Sing Songs Of Praise at suppertime.
8. Read the Bible aloud.
9. Teach your kids to pray.
10. Teach your children to find the gifts that God has given them.
11. Teach your children how to use their gifts to Glorify God.
12. Do Family Service projects
13. . . . .Like cleaning up a park.
14. . . . . . . explaining that God’s creation says good things about him.
15. . . . .Or giving money to the poor.
16. . . . .Or going Christmas Caroling at a Retirement Center
17. . . . .Or supporting a missionary as a family
18. Teach your kids that praying shouldn’t be just asking God for stuff.
19. Discipline your kids and explain to them why you are doing it.
20. Adopt.
21. . . . Or do foster care.
22. Show your kids grace.
23. Show Kindness to your Spouse
24. Ask them to pray for you.
25. Ask your kids forgiveness for a wrong you have done to them.
26. Talk about what is in a child’s heart, not just what he is doing outwardly.
27. Encourage your kids when they learn about God.
28. Give money to your church and work out ways that your child can, as well.
29. Never think you’re a good enough Parent.

I showed this to my wife and she suggested that I put “Pray for your kids” as number 1. I have done so.